Efficiency?

[ChimayLover]

I want to get into all grain brewing, but all the literature is a little overwhelming...For example, what does "efficiency" mean and how do you know when you are at, say 75% efficiency?

Could someone write out the basic step by step ag brewing process in layman's terms? All the literature ive found online lacks a "step by step" approach. Anyone care to help a newbie out?

Thanks!

 

[FlyingHorse]

www.howtobrew.com

 

[efreem01]

When brewing with extract, you're basically adding powdered wort (sugar) to your brew kettle. With extract, you basically get 100% efficiency because you're dumping this sugar right into the brew kettle.

With all grain, a pound of grain has a certain amount of sugar you can extract. How much sugar you are able to extract from the grain is your efficiency. I'm doing a german ale right now and i got only about 60% of the fermentable sugars out of the grain.

 

[Orfy]

You have some reading to do.

If you convert and extract all the available sugar from a grain with a potential of 1054 then you'll end up with an OG of 1054 (if you use a pound/gallon)
If you dial in an effieciency of say 75% and you should get an OG of 1040
If it only comes out at 1035, you are obviously getting a lower efficiency.

(35/40)*100=87.50%

so you got 87.5% of 75%

or 66%

 

[Shoopdog]

This is the calculator I use...

http://www.brewheads.com/efficiency.php

Hope this helps!